Rensselaer Republican, Volume 19, Number 7, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 October 1886 — AN OCTOBER HURRICANE. [ARTICLE]

AN OCTOBER HURRICANE.

Swept by Wind and Flood, No Trace Is Left of Sabine Pass. .5 Scores of Families Perish in the “ Seething Waters of the Gulf. [Galveston (Texas) dispatch.] Details of the destruction by the recent storm at Sabine Pass come in slowly, though they all agree that there has been great loss of life and property. The waters began to invade the town from the gulf and the lake together about 2 o'clock, and rose with unprecedented rapidity. - Citizens of the doomed place did not realize the imminent danger until it was too late to escape, when safety by flight was out of the question. The water kept rising, and betweefi 3 and 4 o'clock the smaller houses began to yield to the resistless force of the waves, and not only moved from their foundations but turned on their sides and tbps. A little later the large houses began to give way, and death by drowning seemed inevitable for every citizen of the place. With the yielding of the smaller houses several persons who had remained in them were drowned, and when residences and business places began to crumble the fatality began to double. The following incomplete list of the drowned was obtained: Miss Mahala, Jim Vondy and family of six, Mrs. Otto Brown and two children, 'Homer King, wife, and child; Mrs. Junker and son, Mrs. Pomeroy and family of five, Mrs. Stewart, daughter, and son; Wilson, Mrs. Arthur Mcßeynolds, Mrs. McDonald and daughter, Frank Mulligan and family, Columbus Martee and family. About twenty-five colored people, whose names could not be learned, were also drowned. This list comprises over sixty souls, ;mong them some of the leading families of the place. There are many others, and it is feared that whole families in different parts of the place have been swept away without leaving-a person or vestige to indicate their horrible fate. It is said that the situation during the latter part of the afternoon beggars description—the manifestation of terror and agony by people looking death in the face and realizing that there was no escape, the dying cries of women rendered almost inaudible by the roar of the sea, the hoarse voice of pallid men trying to eave those dear to them, all combined, made a scene too horrible to be described. The damage to property at Sabine is very great. The wharf property of the town was owned by New York capitalists, who also own the adjoining lands and were aiming to make Sabine Pass an important port on the Gulf coast. The citizens of Beaumont, on receipt of the news, immediately made preparations for relief. The East Texas Railroad placed an engine at their disposal, and a party of men have gone to Orange to procure boats and start for rhe scene. Another dispatch says the damage done bv the storm at Beaumont is also considerable, a number of houses.being blown down and many of the principal lumber mills damaged. The track of the East Texas and Sabine Railway is washed away for miles in a number of places, besides damage being done to bridges and depots. According to the most experienced navigators on this coast, it was Lake Sabine which destroyed the town, which lies only four feet above mean low water, and is bounded on the west by a great swamp. The hurricane of last Sunday in the West Indies blew the waters with great violence toward the Texas coast. This hurricane wave was first noticed on this coast on Sunday morning, attaining its maximum on Tuesday afternoon, and was maintained at a high point by the impetus of the waters behind. The humcane itself did not reach these coasts at all, as scarcely a breath of wind was stirring when the tidal wave first touched the coast. When its maximum was reached on Tuesday afternoon, however, a fierce northwestern gale sprang up along the whole Coast, and at Sabine this gale blew the waters out of Lake Sahine and drove them toward the gulf, where the lake waters were met by the great swell caused by the hurricane. This resulted in -driving the lake waters over onto the little town, and submerging the country for ten miles around without a moment’s Hetiee-. This account of the disaster is confirmed by our experience here with the same gale, and all information from Sabine also confirms the above theory. An Orange (Tex.) special says: Two brothers named Pomeroy were picked up by the schooner Andrew Badin in Sabine Lake. They had been in the water thirtysix hours clinging to their capsized yawls. Their mother and sister, and Mrs. Capt. Junker, her son, and a little girl of the party were lost. The Pomeroys report that’fifty lives were lost at the Pojter House, where the people had collected a. the best place of safety. It went to pieces . at 9 o’clock. Many persons are missing. A Lake Charles (La.) special says: The loss of property along the Cameron Parish gulf coast and’ for some distance west of Sabine Pass by the storm of Tuesday night was fearful. The mailboat from Cameron Parish reports that the water at Calcasieu Pass was eight feet deep at the lighthouse, and .. that the entire country east and west was submerged Tuesday night, drowning thousands of cattle and ruining crops. No lives were lost at Leesburg or Calcasieu Pass, but the following are reported lost at Johnson’s Bayou. La.: Albert Lambert and family; Marioft Lukes and family; George Striever and family; L. Charles Blanchet and family; Radford Grey and family; Franesware and family; Franesware and family. Besides many others whose names have not been acertained. Sabine Pass is situated at the southeast comer of Texas, in Jefferson County, upon a narrow strip of water also called Sabine Pass, less than two miles in length, through which the waters of Sabine Lake empty into the Gulf of Mexico. The lake, which is about fourteen mites long and ten miles wide, forms a reservoir into which the rivers Necheg and Sabine flow. The town of Sabine Pass is the terminal point of the Sabine & East,.Texas Railway, now a part of the Southern Pacific system; since the completion of which two yearn ago it has increased from the three or four hundred inhabitants it had in 1880 to about three times that number. Sabine Pass has obtained considerable notoriety on account of its harb ir, which has been frequently recommended by Government engineers as the be d in natural advantages west of New Orleans. Upon these reports large sums have been appropriated for improvements at that point, and a jetty system upon the Eads plan has been in course of construction for the last three years. ' Historically, Sabine Pass is noted as the rendezvous of the "pirate Lafitte in the early days of Texas, and for the sinking of the Union gunboat Clinton, in 1863, by less than a score of rebels, under command of the notorious Dick